JUSTIN STEELE 4 min read The following is an excerpt from The Aesthetic Revolution: Embracing Vanity and the Future of Fitness to Unlock Your Healthiest Self by Dr. Mike Israetel, the fitness personality and sports scientist behind Renaissance Periodization . I NOTICED MY love handles before I even knew the term “love handles.” Back in high school, after my freshman year, I got absurdly lean—under one hundred pounds. I thought I’d finally unlocked the secret to looking shredded. Then I looked in the mirror . . . and there they were. Love handles. At under one hundred pounds. What kind of cosmic joke was that? Years later, when I took a detour into powerlifting and ballooned up to 270 pounds at around 30 percent body fat, those same love handles evolved into their final form—absolute units. They didn’t just exist; they announced themselves. When I finally dieted down to under 10 percent, everything else on my body looked carved from granite—except for those soft, stubborn side shelves.…